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Shield (Warrior Ability)
Warriors of level 30 and above have an innate ability to serve as a living shield for a targeted player character. While the warrior is serving as a living shield, a portion of the damage the shielded character takes will be redirected to the warrior. The only way to activate this unique ability is to input the /shield command. (Like any other slash command, it can be executed as part of a social hotkey.) Using /shield with no argument will attempt to shield one's current target, while typing /shield followed by a character's name will attempt to shield that specific character, regardless of one's current target. Detailed Mechanics /shield has a base range of 15 units (roughly the size of melee range). This range can be extended by investing in the Extended Shielding AA. Once activated, the range for maintaining the shielding effect is slightly more forgiving (but only slightly). The shielding effect is instantly canceled if the warrior and the target become too far away from one another. /shield lasts 12 seconds by default. The duration can be extended by investing in the Living Shield AA. /shield has a 3 minute base cooldown. No AAs yet exist to hasten this. A character being shielded suffers only 50% of the melee damage he or she would normally receive from any incoming hits. Simultaneously, the warrior doing the shielding suffers between 50% and 75% of the damage the shielded character would normally receive. If the warrior is not wielding a shield, the percentage the warrior suffers is always 75%. If the warrior is wielding a shield, the percentage is reduced by 1% per 2 AC on the shield, down to a minimum of 50%. The damage that both the shielded character and the warrior suffer is based on the damage that the shielded character would have suffered after mitigation was taken into account, but before damage prevention effects like Runes are used to soak up damage. Strategy Since /shield makes the warrior suffer damage using the protected character's damage mitigation, it can be dangerous to the warrior's health when used on squishies. It is considerably less so when used to aid an offtank or one of the sturdier support classes (e.g. bard, cleric). As far as protecting the target goes, /shield synergizes well with damage-absorbing "rune" effects, such as those provided by enchanters. Since their absorptions are applied after the damage has already been split, the shielded character takes an even smaller total burst of damage than it would otherwise. Wielding a shield while using /shield is generally advisable for the reduction in damage that it provides. A socal hotkey can be setup that uses the bandolier to equip a shield immediately prior to activating /shield. Such a hotkey might look something like this: /bandolier activate NameOfWeaponSetHere /shield /gsay Shielding %t! Stay close! Lastly, /shield has applications in deliberately keeping a warrior's health low enough to make use of the class's berserker frenzy mechanic. In the event that a warrior is not tanking in a particular party and wants to contribute better to the party's DPS, it is possible for the warrior to /shield the tank long enough to lose sufficient health to go berserk, without disrupting the main tank's aggro control at all. Once the desired health threshold is reached, the warrior quickly backs out of range to cause the shielding effect to cancel itself. The warrior is then free to use the berserk state to score [blow|crippling blows, until his or her health regens enough to slip back out of it. Obviously, coordinating this sort of effort with the party's healer(s) is necessary (and is basically impossible if one of the healers is a cleric mercenary). Known Bugs The passive AA Phalanx of One causes /shield to become permanently unusable once a warrior purchases a rank of it. Elidroth has confirmed in a post on the official EverQuest forums that he has requested that the game's coders fix this, although there is no ETA yet.